If you live in Cornwall

[Flopseemsstoned]

What’s it really like to live there?

Parents and sister live there, thinking of maybe making the move (abroad at the moment)
What’s life like? Is it affordable to get a house on average wages? We have a toddler, is the lifestyle as great as it seems?

People make places what they are. Generally it is not the other way round.

Cornwall is beautiful. So are other places for reason stated.

@transformandriseup

Interesting thread. I'm moving to camborne in cornwall in 3 weeks 😂😂 but I'm moving from a really rough area in the Midlands and I orginally come from a popular seaside town , so I'm well versed in how the tourist season works. Are people friendly though? As I've found them most unfriendly here where I am in the midlands and we found it so so difficult to break into any kind of circle.

@romdowa Camborne sadly has a poor reputation and is quite far removed from the touristy side of Cornwall but it has a great community, has some lovely local walks, is not too far from the coast and has good transport links. Also it has a fantastic history and used to be the mining centre of the world. I have always lived in Cornwall and I lived in Camborne for several years.

Also Trevithick day is fantastic!!

My partner is actually from the town which is why we are going there to start . I'm glad to hear it has a great community , that's the kind of place we are looking for while also not being too far from the beaches. My dp has already told me all about the mining stacks and trevithick day, so I'm actually looking forward to the move.

Low wages
Largely seasonal employment
Poor public services (healthcare, public transport etc)
Rural so poor access to major road links
High house prices in many areas
In a 2018 survey Cornwall was identified as the second poorest region in Northern Europe (using indices like Child Poverty and homelessness) and has the social problems that go hand in hand with high levels of deprivation.
Can be some very insular and provincial views in terms of xenophobia, racism and homophobia.

It is a beautiful county but it’s not all rolling hills, cute Doc Martin cottages and frolicking on the beaches

Some areas also have a very strong Cornish identity and as an incomer you may not be welcomed with open arms.

I’m assuming your mum & sister ‘migrated’ to Cornwall? What have their experiences been?

@BalladofBarryAndFreda and @DooleySpooley - whereabouts in Cornwall do you live please?

@Demelza82

Please watch the first episode 'Cornwall with Simon Reeve' on BBC iPlayer, it's as accurate as you will get on the issues down there.

Much of it was. But the food van boys weren't quite what they seemed....

Where were you then @DooleySpooley - just interested to know how you know that all the schools in the county are "bad"?

@101spacehoppers, I don't think there's a lot of racism in Cornwall, but there is no reason to attract a racial mix to Cornwall, except for tourism. We've had some great Asian chefs set up restaurants here, but they hate it because cornish socialising is inward looking.

DH is livid tonight as being told he is "male, pale and stale" in MN parlance. Incandescent. In his read of what he has achieved, he has created from nothing in Cornwall a business that employs eight people directly that supports the livelihoods of another 20 people. All taxes paid, and on decent, better than average, local wages. His employees' opinion: not one has left the company in 15 years, except to retire... and yes, we run a proper government approved pension fund.

It is almost impossible to find a balance anywhere on MN. If you are in business to make money, and are good at it, then you must be ripping someone off. It's not true. My plumber won't buy parts for your heating system, because it would have to go through his accounts, which would push him into VAT registration (£87,000): you buy them, on his instructions, and he fits them. He earns £85k annually in Cornwall, does a decent job, and stays under the VAT threshold.

How do you know that all the schools are bad then?

Isn’t Cornwall about to get absolutely slammed by the loss of EU structural funds? Not good for the local economy. Will people from elsewhere relocating to work remotely post-pandemic replace that? I’m not convinced.

@101spacehoppers

But not so many cinemas! Or variety of films. I remember going to 'arthouse night' at the cinema in St Austell when I was in 6th form; it was curated by one of the lecturers. Used to get the last bus home, but you can't do that now because they stopped the buses at 8pm...

Cracking independent cinema with restaurant in Newlyn now. The Newlyn Filmhouse would give any trendy north London art house cinema a run for its money. Also re culture.. we lived in London for 6 years (lots of other places too) and never once went to the theatre. Ok so we had you g children. But once we moved to cornwall - loads of theatre! Much of it outdoors abs child friendly too. Abs we made darned sure we went because we felt it was a rarer beast. Places are what you make of them. I really don't feel starved of culture at all.

Catssarecrazy you don't have to be convinced. I moved here in 1990 to do freelance work, before broadband was a thing, and made it work. But it was never easy or convenient. I got up at 1.30 to be in London for meetings at 8.00 am, and returned to do a turn around for 3.00, so the hours were daft.

Some frantic weeks, I did it twice.

This is the sort of thing you are up against - locals jumping to mad conclusions that vandalism is the reult of second home owners who don't want to look at their boat (what? the boaty view is exactly why they moved there!):

www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/boat-vandalised-feock-amid-fears-5341177

I'm not sure about the lack of diversity - the hospital attracts lots of different people and Truro's schools are definitely not all white. Big eastern EU populations in the spine towns (St Austell, Camborne) thanks to seasonal agricultural work, too.

@HesSpartacus

This is the sort of thing you are up against - locals jumping to mad conclusions that vandalism is the reult of second home owners who don't want to look at their boat (what? the boaty view is exactly why they moved there!):

www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/boat-vandalised-feock-amid-fears-5341177

I'm not sure about the lack of diversity - the hospital attracts lots of different people and Truro's schools are definitely not all white. Big eastern EU populations in the spine towns (St Austell, Camborne) thanks to seasonal agricultural work, too.

Cornwall Live is clickbait central - and attracts the dregs in tens of opinions and spelling and grammar. It's true the are some awful insular (to put it politely) views. When we moved back I was asked by some parents at school if I'd done so to escape all the non white faces. But we're not all like that!

/in terms of/
Pots abs kettles!

It really isn't multicultural here in SE Cornwall, although (she ducks under the parapet) I can't see why it needs to be. I get asked re our business whether we hire, and we do, but only if you have the skills we need. Skin colour is totally irrelevant. If you are a toolmaker with great talent, we'd be interested. You can be blue with purple spots and neon tattoos.

NewLynHill
I was going to suggest the same documentary. A lot of the people I know from down there leave as soon as they can. Their experiences seem to be that those who want well paying jobs leave and don't go back until they're considering retiring, and those who can't/don't want to get well paid jobs will tend to stay but are routinely priced out of houses due to second home ownership, holiday rentals and a low wage economy.

The Simon Reeve documentary on Cornwall was the first and only documentary I have ever seen that showed Cornwall as it really is. And I have lived in Cornwall for more than half of my 64 years, but I have also lived in London (twice), Bristol and New York.

I agree with most of the comments on here;

Sky high property prices, particularly on the north coast where I am.

Low paid jobs unless you are in the public sector.

You need a car, or two, as public transport is abysmal.

Even in our naice town there is a big drug problem. I was chatting with the local pub landlord at the weekend, and he likened it to his time spent working in London pubs.

Both my DC have left. DD now lives in her former uni town in the SE, and DS is about to finish uni and has no intention of coming back. I moved here as a teenager. My parents had this idealistic view that they would be giving us kids the good life, but the reality was anything but.

However, it is very pretty, the coast is nearby if you can get to it in the summer and the broadband is very fast as there has been a huge investment in getting Superfast Cornwall going to entice more business here.

shallIswim do tell about the food van boys!?

Am checking out of this thread as I am finding it very offensive and upsetting tbh.

Having been told that I'm racist, xenophobic, insular, Tory, Brexiteer with no hope of a decent life, living in a county with bad schools , terrible healthcare, nothing to do, shit weather, unfriendly people and the worst levels of poverty and drug taking in the country.

This is not my life. It's a miracle that anyone wants to live in this dystopian part of the country.

Thank God that real life bears no relation to MN's views. And more fool me to responding to what I considered to be a genuine question from OP.